Category Archives: President Barack Obama

“A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  But he would certainly agree that consistency is not but is the reflection of the presence of a “conscious” mind.  To illustrate, Donald Trump when running for election repeatedly criticized Barack Obama for playing golf too much but when he assumed the office proceeded to play golf much more than had any president.  He never offered an explanation and the press never pointedly challenged him on the matter.  When campaigning for the office, he criticized Obama for spending too much time on the golf course when the country had so many problems facing it and declared that, “I’m going to be working for you.  I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”

A “conscious” mind would recognize, “Oh, I said that I would not play golf like my predecessor as that would be in-“consistent” with what I said” but an unconscious mind would not be governed by any need for such any such “consistency”.  This past week a story broke which indicated that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, suffers from the same malady it turns out that she has used a private email server in her role as a presidential adviser for her father.  This was after Trump had furiously denounced Hillary Clinton for doing this during the 2016 campaign and even created the battle cry of, “Lock her up” over the matter.  If Ivanka had been “conscious” as most of us are she would have realized, “Oh, to use a private email server” would be a bit awkward.”

Trump has demonstrated an imperviousness to rules of decorum, civility, and respect for others.  This is because in the depths of his heart he has no regard for others as he does not play by the same set of rules that we do.  For example, we would probably not tell anyone…at least in public…who had asked us a question, “That is a stupid question” and “You always ask stupid questions” as he did a couple of weeks when a reporter asked a simple question to him.  Trump can do that because of this imperviousness to these societal rules and conventions and he knows he can get by with it and has always been permitted to get by with it.  He has never had firm limits set with him and when anyone attempts he bullies them into submission.  Witness the Republican Party.

Donald Trump and his Shame-Based Psyche

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If we don’t know already enough about the character of Donald Trump, we now have another glimpse into the dark recesses of his heart with a new book, “The Truth about Trump” by Michael D’Antonio.  The author uses Trump’s own words from an interview two years ago to show us just how extensive is the shame-base that governs this man who could soon be the next President of the United States.  This shame-base is so deep-seated and pervasive that he cannot acknowledge any wrong or having lost in anything.  It boils down to an inability to admit, “I am wrong” about even the simplest matter.  Often when it would have been politically prudent to have acknowledged that “I misspoke” or “I now regret having said that” or some other euphemistic say of acknowledging he had made a mistake, he will merely double-down on the matter.  At times it has been comical.

 

All of us have a shame base and it serves a purpose, forcing us to “join the human race” and play by its rules…more or less…even when at times these rules seem to be more than we can bear.  But if we cannot play by the rules we will be an “out-lier” and possibly become the bully on the playground who fails to regard common civilities and perfunctory kindnesses necessary to “join in the reindeer games,”  those from which Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer was excluded. The playground bully is comfortable with the disruptive influence he has on the play-ground, and even thrives on it in some perverted manner.  Those that carry this impudence to an extreme and cross a certain boundary at some point will end up in the principal’s office and face frequent suspension from school.  For the “play-ground” must have rules as otherwise the “civilization” that it represents will disintegrate into complete chaos.

 

In any ordinary “play-ground” Trump would have already been suspended or institutionalized in one of the facilities at which I used to practice counseling for incorrigible teen-age offenders.  But Trump stumbled onto a “playground” that was amenable to his excesses, allowing him to reach a point at which he could not be stopped.  Oh, sure now his Republican Party is greatly troubled by his presence and by his power but most of them still will not acknowledge that they created an atmosphere in their Party the past few decades that would permit him to climb to power by fostering a culture of dishonesty and hypocrisy which would make someone like Trump viable.  If they’d have maintained some basic sense of moral and spiritual integrity, the resulting structure, i.e “boundaries”, would have made it impossible for demagoguery to gain traction.  To illustrate, for the past eight years of the Obama presidency they have been passive in response to members of its constituency that insinuated and declared that Obama was not an actual citizen of the United States, was actually a Muslim,.  Often I watched the GOP leadership sidestep opportunities to quash this type of non-sense but they would always equivocate on the matter, not wanting to alienate their base who thrives on hysterical non-sense.

But my main concern today is, “Why do intelligent citizens continue to support him when reports such as the D’Antonio book clearly reveal that Trump is mentally unstable?”  And furthermore just yesterday a Conservative firebrand, Glenn Beck, described Trump as a “psychopath” about whom he was frightened.  Trump’s instability is so egregious that it is commonly accepted but many conservatives sheeplishly declare they are standing firm in support of him, lest Hillary Clinton be elected..  So, where is reason in my country today?  Have we lost our mind?  Are we crazy?

Well, no.  The problem is that “reason” is not the guiding force in our lives and never has been.  Our reason is but the surface dimension of life and is always subservient to subterranean dimensions of the heart that we do not wish to acknowledge.  As Woody Allen once said about marrying his step-daughter, “The heart wants what it wants.”  Or as someone else once put it, “Our thinking is the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”  To put it still another way, our reasoning which purportedly governs our life is always governed by the unconscious.  But for many people the notion of being influenced by unconscious motivations jeopardizes their ego-driven belief that they are totally in control of their lives,  that they “know” what they are doing, and are “right” about what they are doing and believing.  To recognize this hidden dimension of their heart would jeopardize their illusion of being in control.  And control is the core issue in this political campaign.  It is a battle between people who are firmly entrenched in a now-threatened view of the world that we are in control of our lives and those of us that have imbibed of what I think can best be described as post-modern thought.  This modern view of the world recognizes that we only have a perspective on the world and do not see things objectively, making it necessary to lighten-up a bit with our view of the world and allow more diversity that we used to think was necessary or even possible.

And this, my friend, is scary!  What makes it so frightening is that the ego can no longer reign in our hearts and lives, forcing us to humble ourselves a bit and see, understand, and experience that our view of the world is very finite and given to being very self-serving.  By nature we see and believe only what we want to see and believe.  Or, in the famous words of Jesus, we “have eyes to see but see not, ears to hear but hear not.”

NYT book review of D’Antonio book:   (See NYT review of the D’Antonio book–http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/us/politics/donald-trump-interviews.html?_r=0)

Thinking Outside of the Box With Comedy

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I’ve always been blessed/cursed with “thinking outside of the box” though most of my life I’ve spent carefully trying and or pretending to do otherwise.  Here in this blog I like to focus on figures I have come across…past and present…who not only think outside of the box but often even dare to think outside of the box that the box is in!  Yes, that is a scary notion and can be dangerous as comedian  Robin Williams demonstrated so tragically.

Here I want to share a video link to another pair of comedians who push the envelope even further than Williams, at times venturing into anarchy or apparent nihilism.  But their intent is comedy and by sharing this skill of theirs they can certainly illustrate features of this human comedy that each of us plays a bit part in.

Keye and Peele here are spoofing President Obama, with one of them portraying Obama the straight man being very Presidential.  But then the other portrays another dimension of the President, an outlandish, outspoken, bombastic black man who is very angry.  In this spoof we see a good-natured illustration of the human comedy—we all have at least two dimensions to our personality, one in which we perform according to social convention and the other in which, if we had the liberty, we would say what we really would like to say.  This is very much related to the success of Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump who is at the top of the polls largely because he says things that more conventional candidates would never dare to say.

(http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0py5fm/key-and-peele-exclusive—obama-s-anger-translator—meet-luther—uncensored)

Here is another version of the same skit, this time featuring President Obama himself playing himself at a National Press Club Dinner.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6NfRMv-4OY)

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Embedded Thinking #3

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Blog—embedded thinking#3

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Abu Abdallah is in an Iraqi prison, awaiting execution for recruiting suicide bombers.  In the following Guardian interview he remains adamantly committed to his cause, firmly resolved that his actions were Allah’s will, and that even collateral damage in the attacks he orchestrated were Allah’s will.  Abdu perfectly illustrates the “embedded thinking” that I have been writing about the past week, “thinking” which has such an emotional (and unconscious) investment that the body of thought appears to be completely autonomous.  He is not thinking, he is being “thought.”  This is the “dis-embodied word” that, carried to an extreme, leads to pronounced evil.  Abu Abdullah is enslaved by ideology and this “enslavement” is so complete that human experiences like regret and remorse are not possible.  Those “bothersome” human qualities are laid aside for the accomplishment of Allah’s will.   (See full article in following link:  http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-mastermind-describes-suicide-bombers-2015-8

Certainty is usually not toxic like Abdullah’s.  Most human beings live daily with the comfort of certainty that their way of viewing the world does not merit any introspection and the doubt it would create.  Give everyone the “pauser reason” that some of us have and the world would collapse immediately.  But for some individuals, and groups of individuals, the need for certainty becomes pathological and the consequences are often severe.  This need stems from deep-seated fears, an unconscious uncertainty that can be assuaged only by investing inordinately in a vein of thought that provides the illusion of certainty.  This “illusion” might appear delusional to outside observers but to those who are deeply embedded in an “illusion” it is the right way of viewing the world; and, so often this assuredness is attributed to a Supreme Being.

Life is fragile.  We are merely dust of the earth, “quintessence of dust” to use Shakespeare’s term, that has miraculously managed to gain “consciousness” and find the power to create human culture.  But beneath this thin veneer of consciousness, that reptilian brain still percolates and sometimes it “breathes out threatenings and slaughterings” and overrules the “pauser” that our forebrain was designed for.  One poet had this in mind when he wrote, “Only a tissue thin curtain in the brain shuts out the coiled recumbent land lord.”  (Eugene L. Mayo)

Pathological certainty is like a cancer in that it cannot be contained and always needs to “convince” others even at the point of the sword.  For those embedded in their own ideological certainty need to swell their ranks for the end purpose of making the world “the way it should be.”  And inevitably this “way the world should be” will be “God’s will” or “Allah’s will” and the end will always justify the means.  And as long as there is anybody in the world who does not subscribe to these “noble” and “true” ideas, the fear-based ideologue will be threatened.  The fear-based ideologue seeks to obliterate difference or “otherness”.

Mental illness is a reference problem.  This clinical bromide grasps the pathology of this “embedded thinking” which at a certain point of “embeddedness” becomes incapable of realizing that there are other ways of viewing the world.  One who feels certain that his tin foil hat will keep intrusive thoughts from outer space away is not insane in a community of like-minded souls.  And one who believes that President Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim socialist is not “nuts” in a group that firmly believes this to be true.